giant Cypress

Be True to Your School

The first semester of Shannon Rogers’ Hand Tool School is coming to an end soon, so if you were thinking about joining the Hand Tool School, now would be a great time. I signed up for a year of the Hand Tool School back in December. One might ask why would I be interested in this at all, as there seems to be no evidence of planes or saws being pulled in any of the videos on The Renaissance Woodworker, Shannon’s other website. To my mind, woodworking is woodworking, and one of the postulates I’ve been working with as I’ve been trying to understand Japanese woodworking tools is that there are more similarities than differences in the tools used by Japanese and western woodworkers. I’ve found that when I read about a piece of Federal style furniture and how it was made, even though I personally am not a huge fan of the Federal style, and even though this style developed in the west at a time when Japan was completely isolated from the rest of the world, that there is always something to be learned.

A membership to the Hand Tool School is $100 for 6 months, or $150 for a year. There are many other excellent resources for learning hand tool techniques out on the internet, such as Bob Rozaieski’s Logan Cabinet Shoppe, and the series of videos that Lie-Nielsen has on YouTube. So why would anyone want to pay for the Hand Tool School? Because in the first semester, Shannon has really done a fantastic job covering in detail the basic hand tool skills needed to build a cabinet project completely by hand, and showing how to apply those skills in practice.

The first semester has 12 lessons to this point, which each include multiple videos that show the techniques and how to apply them. By my count, there’s 32 hours and 38 minutes of video instruction in the first semester so far, and that makes the Hand Tool School the greatest bargain in all of woodworking video instruction.  If the average woodworking DVD goes for $25 for an hour-long DVD, the cost for the first semester alone would be over $800, and Shannon still isn’t done yet. Looking at it this way, joining for $100 for a single semester is a bit of a no-brainer. At $150 for two semesters, that’s even more of a bargain.

(Disclaimer: I have no financial relationship with the Hand Tool School, and I paid for my membership just like anyone else would.)